Guard reprimanded for acting to stop teen inmate from choking herself to death

TORONTO – A correctional officer who scrambled to cut a ligature from the neck of a teenaged inmate who had turned purple was reprimanded for his efforts, an inquest into her death heard Thursday.

In fact, Blaine Phibbs testified, a prison manager warned him he could be formally disciplined or even charged criminally if he went into Ashley Smith’s cell again under similar circumstances.

“He told me there was no reason to go into the cell. As long as she was breathing, we were not to go into her cell,” Phibbs said.

Video of the incident played for the inquest showed Phibbs and other guards entering Smith’s segregation cell at the Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener, Ont., about a month before she finally strangled herself.

In the September incident, Phibbs said he had difficulty cutting the ligature from her neck.

“We were having to remove so many ligatures from Ashley’s neck, the 911 (emergency) knives were dull,” he said.

Management insisted that what had taken place was “borderline excessive use of force,” Phibbs said.

“I did not agree,” he told coroner’s counsel, Jocelyn Speyer.

“We thought she was in distress, that’s why we entered the cell.”

His protests to management were shut down, he testified:

“You are not a psychologist, you are not a warden. This is my institution, I will run it as I see fit,” Phibbs was told.

The heart-breaking cycle would be repeated.

Phibbs was slated for further reprimand meetings, including one on the day in October 2007 when Smith, 19, of Moncton, N.B., choked to death. Guards, ordered not to intervene, simply watched her die.

One reason front-line officers videotaped every key interaction with Smith was to show management how difficult it was coping with the disturbed girl, who had spent almost three years in segregation cells around the country.

Hours of video show Phibbs and other guards — barred from entering the cell except in an emergency — talking to, or negotiating with, the teen through the heavy cell door.

The videos make it clear Phibbs was one of the few people Smith responded to positively. With him, she is mostly calm, if not always co-operative about his requests to hand over ligatures or glass, or uncover her cell camera.

He appears to be almost always kind, gentle, patient, firm. Sometimes she giggles.

“You’re going to seriously hurt yourself one day,” he says at one point. “You want to hurt yourself?”

“No.”

“What happens if we can’t get that off you? What if it’s too tight?”

Smith’s behaviour appeared to become increasingly aberrant, with repeated episodes of serious self-harm.

On one occasion, when officers intervened to save her, she became violent, kicking and punching. Guards used a noxious spray, known as OC spray.

“Instead of having staff handle her, it was easier to spray,” Phibbs explained.

In earlier testimony, Phibbs was asked if he had ever been sprayed. He said he had.